Earth's Location

Ok, here's another one I'd love to hear some opinions on.

Where is Earth?

In regards to Beast Wars, it's stated that Earth's location is a carefully guarded secret in the years post The Great War and the signing of the Pax Cybertronia.

But how is that possible?

Transformers, on both sides, have been trapsing back and forth from Earth to Cybertron for years, how is it that it's location is suddenly a secret?

Was it moved?

Was it blown up and the population moved to another planet?

Its reason for being a secret is obvious: with the development of TransWarp technology, someone might want to go back in time and change thing (like that would happen), but how could they control that information?

I'd love to hear some theories.

It's here.:p

On a more serious note, wasn't G1 Cybertron really close to Earth/our solar system after The Ultimate Doom anyway? For a species with a decent space fleet which is big on exploring the Maximals did a pretty decent job of keeping a key historical planet a secret.

After the signing of the Pax Cybertronia, all contact and travel to Earth was forbidden and its location became secret. Hence the current generation of Transformers had lost the ancient knowledge of how to travel to Earth.

At the end of the Great War the Transformers completely abandoned Earth -- and when a location becomes abandoned, knowledge about that location can become lost. It happens with cities on Earth too, e.g.
* The Arabian city of Ubar (aka Pillam)
* The Greek city of Troy
* The Incan capital of Vilcabamba
* Machu Picchu (aka "The Lost City of the Incas")
* The Phoenician city of Carthage
* The Chinese city of Xanadu
* Jordan's Petra (where the Tomb of the Primes was discovered in ROTF)
* The Aztec city of Aztlan
...et al.

And there are some lost cities that have never been rediscovered - and we only know about them in legend, so whether or not these cities even exist is questionable. e.g. Camelot, Atlantis etc. Some legendary/mythological cities have actually been found, like Troy -- but most remain legend.

Look at the location of Earth in post-War Cybertron like a Dead Language (e.g. Latin). It was once widely known, but the knowledge has since been lost and is only kept by a small minority (i.e. surviving Autobots and Decepticons). When knowledge stops being transmitted from one generation to another, then that knowledge can be lost. That's why nobody speaks Latin as a mother tongue today (even the Pope speaks it as a non-native language - his mother tongue being German).

Odie: Cybertron returned to Alpha Centauri after the events of "The Ultimate Doom," -- hence why all those crazy global storms that were tearing Earth apart stopped. I don't know how big the Maximals' expeditionary fleet was... we didn't really see any other expeditionary vessels besides the Axalon and the ship that Botanica served on. The only fleet we did see was actually a military fleet (日本の自衛隊みたいかなぁ*) -- although they didn't last very long against Unicron, heh. :) It's possible that all travel to the Milky Way may have been forbidden, hence locating a tiny speck like Earth within an entire galaxy would be rather difficult. It would be very time and resource consuming to scour the Milky Way to find Earth... much like if we were to try scouring Earth's oceans in search of Atlantis. It would be far easier to steal the Golden Disk and learn of Earth's exact location.

*like Japan's self defence force

Considering how everything Cybertronian that leaves the orbit of their planet manages to crash here, I'd imagine that Cybertron is like 5 meters away from Earth... :p

(anyone seen that recent DrWho episode, of the aliens that no one can remember once they turn away? Maybe something like that prevents everyone from either planet from seeing or knowing where the other one is.)

And in every continuity the Autobots always seem to arrive in the United States of America.

My favourite line in "Monsters Vs Aliens":
"Once again, a UFO has landed in America, the only country UFOs ever seem to land in."

The 'loss of information' is perhaps the most plausable, but something doesn't quite sit right. I mean, they're robots, they have hard-disks for memory, not this fleshy thing we have. They also live for hundreds, thousands or in some cases, millenia it seems.

I was musing upon it this morning in my theory class and came up with the following:

Perhaps it's location wasn't that well known to begin with. Leaders knew it's exact location, troops simply knew 'of' it but had no reason to know exactly where it was.

Ships and Space Bridges could get you there, but it's not like you had to walk there yourself if you were a soldier.

So if the co-ordinates weren't that widely known to begin with, it would then be easier for the information to be lost over time, and squirrelled away by those in the know.

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Originally Posted by Verno

Perhaps it's location wasn't that well known to begin with. Leaders knew it's exact location, troops simply knew 'of' it but had no reason to know exactly where it was.

Ships and Space Bridges could get you there, but it's not like you had to walk there yourself if you were a soldier.

So if the co-ordinates weren't that widely known to begin with, it would then be easier for the information to be lost over time, and squirrelled away by those in the know.

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This is likely, in most G1 stories it's not like there's a lot of ships going back and forth from Earth and Cybertron.

It's also possible that in the Beast Wars timeline that some Maximals or Predacons, or both, were travelling to Earth anyway on the sly since both groups had Great War veterans in their ranks. Whatever BW Megatron did to travel where he wanted to go seemed to be a fluke and caused some sort of rift - I'm not convinced time travel was that easy.

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Originally Posted by Paulbot

It's also possible that in the Beast Wars timeline that some Maximals or Predacons, or both, were travelling to Earth anyway on the sly since both groups had Great War veterans in their ranks. Whatever BW Megatron did to travel where he wanted to go seemed to be a fluke and caused some sort of rift - I'm not convinced time travel was that easy.

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Yeah, I've always subscribed to the idea that The Predacon Ship had a prototype TransWarp engine in which they'd basically hope to hit not only Earth but also hit the right time.

When they arrived, Megatron didn't really care if it was Earth or not, but simply if it had Energon.

The crude TransWarp engine tore a hole in Space and Time, and it created a wormhole, through which Depth Charge fell in his Star Hopper; the area of space had been ruled off-limits by the Maximal High Council - perhaps another ship had fallen through so they called it a no go zone.

The TransWarp cruiser flown by Ravage seemed to also travel through the same wormhole. But why his ship wasn't slammed with the transwarp wavefront like Depth Charge's is unknown. Perhaps it did fly on its own route as it was TransWarp capable.

But yes, the Predacon Ship's flight definately caused some kind of rift in Space/Time.

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Originally Posted by GoktimusPrime

Odie: Cybertron returned to Alpha Centauri after the events of "The Ultimate Doom," -- hence why all those crazy global storms that were tearing Earth apart stopped. I don't know how big the Maximals' expeditionary fleet was... we didn't really see any other expeditionary vessels besides the Axalon and the ship that Botanica served on. The only fleet we did see was actually a military fleet (日本の自衛隊みたいかなぁ*) -- although they didn't last very long against Unicron, heh. :) It's possible that all travel to the Milky Way may have been forbidden, hence locating a tiny speck like Earth within an entire galaxy would be rather difficult. It would be very time and resource consuming to scour the Milky Way to find Earth... much like if we were to try scouring Earth's oceans in search of Atlantis. It would be far easier to steal the Golden Disk and learn of Earth's exact location.

*like Japan's self defence force

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Really? I always thought it just ended up somewhere around the edges of our solar system, hence why the Combaticons and Starscream were able to fly there on their own...
That must've been one big explosion that knocked it away, lucky for the Autobots it didn't wipe out Earth. Take that physics!:D :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Verno

The 'loss of information' is perhaps the most plausable, but something doesn't quite sit right. I mean, they're robots, they have hard-disks for memory, not this fleshy thing we have. They also live for hundreds, thousands or in some cases, millenia it seems.

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Yes but if the information stopped being transmitted before the rise of Maximals and Predacons, then that new generation would simply not have it. As Maximals and Predacons became the majority on Cybertron, then those with knowledge of Earth became a minority.

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Originally Posted by Verno

Perhaps it's location wasn't that well known to begin with. Leaders knew it's exact location, troops simply knew 'of' it but had no reason to know exactly where it was.

Ships and Space Bridges could get you there, but it's not like you had to walk there yourself if you were a soldier.

So if the co-ordinates weren't that widely known to begin with, it would then be easier for the information to be lost over time, and squirrelled away by those in the know.

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Yep, this sounds totally plausible too. So we'd be looking at a small minority within a small minority of Cybertronians who would know how to get to Earth.

I'd like to think that the "co-ordinates" for Earth were in Navigational computers and the like, so 'bots didn't need to know them. That way it was easy for the information to be wiped from nav computer data banks.
Bit like GPS for us: we can type a location into a Garmin which will then tell us how to drive to it. We don't need to know (or remember) the exact lat/long co-ordinates.

Ark Navigational Main Menu -> Recent destinations -> Earth -> Engage!
Space flight = cakewalk.
:D

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Originally Posted by Ode to a Grasshopper

Really? I always thought it just ended up somewhere around the edges of our solar system, hence why the Combaticons and Starscream were able to fly there on their own...
That must've been one big explosion that knocked it away, lucky for the Autobots it didn't wipe out Earth. Take that physics!:D :rolleyes:

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I'm in agreement with this theorem of Odie...

Another example/clue would be in the Cartoon movie itself... Optimus Prime flew from Cybertron's Moonbase to Earth to "stop Megatron Whatever the cost" but if you look at it, he received Blaster's distress signal basically in the morning of the attack ... and he arrived like, what, basically is the next morning ( as seen with the scenes - exchange of firepower and the setting and rising of the sun with Autobot city in smoke and ruins) either that's one freakin fast shuttle he uses or Cybertron's just around the corner of some Asteroid belt within the Solar system and not back to Alpha Centauri. Maybe, Cybertron just ended up in the fringes of our Solar system - beyond Eris after the events of Ultimate doom, coz I mean as Prime said they have to make a few "runs" to Earth to get more energon so they can stage a full attack on the Decepticons who have conquered Cybertron. Far enough that it doesn't need to revolve to our Star sun Sol, and as such remains dark as it's too far.

On a tangent query and possible additonal clue to where Earth is in relation to Cybertron's location - that transwarp wave they sent .. does it wave through space AND time? or just space... even so, for a wave to reach Cybertron like as quickly as they predicted then that would mean it's like just near and not like gazillion light years away on another nebulae basically.

So for me, Cybertron isnt in it's original galaxy post the Ultimate doom event but rather just free floating in space beyond our solar system yet not so far that it's really easy to get to Earth if one has a good transwarp drive or Warp engine tech (as in Star trek's ships) it's just a matter of which direction to head to since in Space basically it's like as your in the middle of the ocean in a speedboat, unless you've got GPS or something you can just keep on driving to whatever location and you wouldn't find the freakin Earth your looking for. :P especially as (incorporating the lost info theorem) in time the direction for Earth hasn't been installed anymore in the GPS/Navigational systems of current ships since by this time, how many years has it been? well a century or what.. BUt anyways that's my take on this:)

The Odieverse has it orbiting the sun somewhere out from Earth, mostly for the humor value of Cybertron messing around with the morning newspaper horoscopes section.:D

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Originally Posted by Ode to a Grasshopper

The Odieverse has it orbiting the sun somewhere out from Earth, mostly for the humor value of Cybertron messing around with the morning newspaper horoscopes section.:D

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erm okay let me rephrase that, Im in agreement with part of Odie's theorem and interject my own at some point.....:p:p

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Originally Posted by liegeprime

erm okay let me rephrase that, Im in agreement with part of Odie's theorem and interject my own at some point.....:p:p

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That's just what a Cyberius would say!:p

As an aside, the Odieverse is very much a different beast to the standard G1 canon(s). In this case I'd still have placed it somewhere in the same solar system as Earth post-Ultimate Doom, but then continuity in the G1 toon was never that big a deal.

So if they moved Cybertron, could they not have moved Earth? Big Space-Bridge or some planetary engines?

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Originally Posted by Verno

So if they moved Cybertron, could they not have moved Earth? Big Space-Bridge or some planetary engines?

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Yep.

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Originally Posted by Ode to a Grasshopper

Yep.

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Glad to know it's not off the table.

So maybe it's both!

1. Co-ordinates of Earth's original location are only known by a few and forgotten/lost by the masses.

2. Earth was moved for it's own protection after the end of the Great War, to let it rebuild on its own, without meddling Transformers.

And then it was renamed Ravalox... :p

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Originally Posted by Ode to a Grasshopper

Yep.

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Well that's one episode for Global warming:p

Im so tempted to answer the continuity errors with some answers of my own hehehe e.g. point 3 of Continuity errors - the answer is simple - Serendipity:D:D

Point 2 of your findings Verno though is still debatable - Earth didn't get moved, Cybertron most likely did... it's got no sun to tether it in orbit so it just hurls into space without a proper orbit... moving further from earth or any other way as millenia has passed, we are not sure. Earth stays in it's orbit coz the sun will continue to exert it's gravitational pull keeping it more or less in it's proper place and orbit.

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Originally Posted by griffin

Considering how everything Cybertronian that leaves the orbit of their planet manages to crash here, I'd imagine that Cybertron is like 5 meters away from Earth... :p

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Very relevant

http://www.shortpacked.com/comics/20...standfound.png

heheheh, and isn't is ridiculous that always it lands in the US, what? Asia not good enough for you damn bots?!?! hey labor is cheaper there if you wanna enslave anyone, plus the there's a whole lot more people to stomp on mad::p;) or how about that land down under?!? it's got more metal ore than the US plus it's not so heavily defended since most of the defense troops are away :p;) ever think about that you big bots!?!?

Gee, very creative as usual... I wonder where he stole got the idea for that. :rolleyes:
(could just be a coincidence I guess... but the timing of something that visualises exactly what I was cynically describing last week is uncanny)

I think it's a response to Prime, there have been a lot of cybertronian artifacts turn up on earth this season.

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Originally Posted by UltraMarginal

I think it's a response to Prime, there have been a lot of cybertronian artifacts turn up on earth this season.

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And all for one Very Big reason IMO. :D:cool: